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A baseless, common misconception: Since young people grew up with the internet and spend so much time on their phones, surely they know how to evaluate digital content.
A thread about this problem and lesson ideas for how to address it.
A thread about this problem and lesson ideas for how to address it.
This myth is pervasive. A couple examples from news stories this year. 
Our research shows the opposite. More than 3,000 high school students watched this video claiming to show ballot stuffing in the 2016 Democratic primaries. 52% said it constituted “strong evidence” of U.S. voter fraud. A quick online search reveals it’s actually from Russia.
In the same sample of students, most could neither identify a sponsored post as an advertisement nor determine that a supposedly nonpartisan website was really run by a corporate PR firm. https://cor.stanford.edu/research/students-civic-online-reasoning-a-national-portrait
Prior research has also revealed shortcomings. Our 2016 report showed that students from middle school to college had not been equipped to navigate the internet’s treacherous terrain. Many other researchers have come to similar conclusions. https://cor.stanford.edu/research/evaluating-information-the-cornerstone-of-cor
How can we help our students? Use research-tested approaches. In our study with professional fact checkers, we found that they use strategies that make them better evaluators of online sources than the rest of us.
What was the most important strategy fact checkers used? Lateral reading. They left an unfamiliar site, opened new browser tabs, and searched for information from trusted sources about the original site.
We developed lessons and assessments based on fact checkers’ strategies. A study in a large urban district showed that students who completed @CivicOnline lessons outperformed their peers in regular classrooms on an assessment of online reasoning. https://cor.stanford.edu/research/cor-curriculum-evaluation
Wondering where to start? Introduce your students to lateral reading with this lesson in which students watch as you model how to read laterally about a site that tries to obscure its real purpose. Students then practice with another site. https://cor.stanford.edu/curriculum/lessons/intro-to-lateral-reading
After introducing students to lateral reading, follow up with other free lessons and tasks focused on this crucial skill. https://cor.stanford.edu/curriculum/collections/teaching-lateral-reading
In order to effectively combat the scourge of misinformation, we need to confront it head on. As educators, we can do our part by acknowledging that our students need support and by equipping them with evaluation strategies that work.
